Joe Lieberman essentially has two options for 2012: Retire or become a Republican.

The Connecticut senator and Democratic exile hasn’t made up his mind whether to seek a fifth term, Lieberman and those close to him say. But if he does, the GOP ticket appears to offer his best shot at reelection.

“That’s his only hope,” said John Olsen, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO and a former state Democratic chairman.

Even that, Olsen and others involved in Connecticut politics say, looks like a long shot. But no other avenue appears to be open to the 68-year-old Lieberman, who won a three-way contest in 2006 after losing the Democratic primary to a challenger from the left, Ned Lamont.

Knowing Joe, he would not be content to switch to the GOP without a grand pronouncement that the party left him, so if he does switch, it will probably be early next year, and he will just cherry-pick some issue that he knows the Democrats are going to win on, whine about it, and then announce that he can in good conscience no longer remain a Democrat. The only question is what the issue will be…

I think Lieberman’s far too much of a drama queen to retire, so switching parties it is. And I’m in agreement that it’ll be with a great deal of fanfare, and happily hyped ad nauseum by all the news outlets.

Wait, Lieberman become a Republican? He’ll get primaried in a heartbeat. Yes, he wants to bomb the shit out of brown people, but many, many of his other stances will make him persona non grata with the lunatics who got Angle and O’Donnell on the GOP ticket.

explain to me how any non-troglodyte switches to the GOP in any state and does not get tea bagged. The Connecticut GOP is not more liberal than Delaware’s GOP and Joe would have to win the GOP primary…not gonna happen.

I can’t understand why he would want to continue. 2010 onward is going to be fucking ugly and there will have to be some incredibly unpalatable decisions that need to be made. Retire, take on a consulting gig with Goldman or a massive law firm and reap the rewards of a lifetime of political connections.

The Democrats probably want him to switch parties. If he switches to the Repubs, he gets tea-partied and that’s the end of Joe. If he runs as an independent, he might siphon off enough moderate votes to make the Republican candidate the winner.

Speaking of bombing Iran, PoliticsDaily.com (sorry, don’t have the link) has a three-part series that is trying to rehab the Image of the B-1 bomber as a necessary aircraft for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

President Obama to Barbara Walters: ‘I Don’t Think About Sarah Palin’
In an exclusive interview with Barbara Walters from the White House, President Barack Obama says he’s not giving much thought to the 2012 election, but is focusing instead on being “the best possible president.” And, he said, he certainly isn’t focused on a potential challenge from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
When asked specifically if he thinks he can beat Sarah Palin in 2012, the president told Walters “I don’t think about Sarah Palin.”

I should hope that our President has better things to do than think about Sarah Palin

@Culture of Truth: He won as an Independent in ’06 because the GOP didn’t expect Lieberman to be primaried off the Dem ticket and nominated a placeholder candidate. They won’t clear the field for him on purpose in ’12, and with serious candidates for both the Dems and the GOP in the race there’s not enough room left for him to win. And as mentioned above, if there’s anything left of the Tea Party dynamic a year from now Joe’s chances for the GOP nomination are pretty slim.

The Democrats in the state of Connecticut? Or the Democrats in the Senate? Because – and correct me if I am wrong – I was pretty sure everyone from Chuck Schumer to then-Senator Barak Obama campaigned for Lieberman in 2006. I didn’t see any support coming out of the DSCC for Ned Lamont.

@Jose Padilla: Not so sure. CT isn’t much of a tea party state. The last Republican senate candidate was a boring old rich lady and she easily won the primary without promising any crazy.

@Marc McKenzie: Yes, Lieberman is independent, but he caucuses with the Democrats, so some lazy news outlets feel it’s OK to put a D after his name. Plus he still has all his old committee assignments under the Democrats. If the national party had a pair, Joe Lieberman could be a lot more independent than he is now.

@Corner Stone: Al Gore was maintaining the marriage between the old school liberal Dems and the DLC conservative Dems. One of us, one of them. Clinton was a new school conserva-Dem who picked up Gore. Gore returned the favor by picking up Lieberman.

I’ll say one thing for the Republicans, they are masters at message discipline. It doesn’t matter if it’s a crony robot like Pataki, or a frosh Congressman-elect, they all say the the same things, no matter what question is asked.

@Zifnab: IMO, he picked him as a stark refudiation of Bill Clinton. He was sending a message that his administration would not be ethically challenged as the Clinton WH was. As well as saying he wasn’t Clinton’s buttboy.

Gaffe about our “allies” aside, it’s obvious from that audio clip that she still doesn’t have a clue about the geopolitical situation on the Korean Peninsula. I think my favorite thing about her is the way she tries to cover up her total ignorance by throwing out as many buzzwords as possible, regardless of whether they make sense in a sentence. It’s like watching a 6th grader try to fake his way through an oral report on salamanders in science class.

I think my favorite thing about her is the way she tries to cover up her total ignorance by throwing out as many buzzwords as possible, regardless of whether they make sense in a sentence.

But that’s how all of them talk. She may be guilty of a little more per average but it’s evident in the way all of them speak.
I think we’ve covered this before here, but it’s like their audience only has the ability to grasp sound byte level bursts, then they take those catch phrases and decode them in their heads.
The Republican party essentially speaks in catch phrase.
I think someone here referenced the excellent Star Trek TNG episode “Darmok“, regarding a race of beings that use phrases to express all meaning.

If McMahon runs again, that’s a lot of money to go against in the Republican primary. Plus, he would have to disavow his DINO credentials to satisfy the Tea Party. Once that happens, he will have to vote straight Republican in the Senate. When he abandons his vote as a bargaining chip, the Democratic leadership can kick him to the curb and he will likely lose his committee chair. If the Senate goes Republican, there would be no guarantees because the Republican leadership would have more reliable members to chair committees.

Retirement could mean a gig on Faux Noise as their “liberal” commentator. He would be able to continue to whine on camera and make big bucks in the process.

Retirement seems to be his only option, to go out with whatever shreds of dignity he has left.

he’s 68, in 2012 he’ll be 70, and will have his congressional retirement package well in hand… it’s not like he’s being forced to work till he’s 70 in order to collect a tiny social security allotment…

I don’t see why he won’t run as he is now. Some of this depends on who runs as the party candidate for both of the other parties.

I don’t know how much the tea party will influence the GOP choice and depending on the candidate that could be a big deal. The Dems, if they choose right, might be able to pull some of the former Lieberman voters away – though that isn’t certain. I don’t have a feel for how much the voters for Lieberman were and are wed to him. I assume he won last time because he pulled more GOP votes last time which if the candidate is too extreme, could happen again.

Lieberman and McCain are why I am now in support of term limits. After a certain point, Senators and Representatives can do nothing useful and are just hanging onto their jobs. And yes, I know that I am assuming a lot by implying that they actually can do something useful at any point in their careers.

@FlipYrWhig: Apparently the “Connecticut for Lieberman” line he ran on is not only no longer an option, whatever new “party” he created could not, by CT law, include the words “Connecticut” or “Lieberman.”

I have to wonder if Obama wouldn’t be willing to offer Lieberman some appointed position to help him not lose face by running and losing.

Joe is one of the most solid rabid right wing pro-Israel supporter’s in the Senate. when he was running against Lamont, he got a lot of support and funding from pro-Israel advocacy groups. This being despite Lamont’s position on Israel being no different than Joe’s. There is no way Joe is ever losing this Senate seat, Republican, Democrat or Independent. Obama knows this, which is why he kowtows to Joe’s whims

Joe Lieberman essentially has two options for 2012: Retire or become a Republican.

And he has to do one of those two because running and winning as an independent in 2006 worked out so poorly for him? It seems highly unlikely that Joe would attempt to return as a Democrat, but he already has a winning model to emulate — himself.

Running as an “independent” might even garner him lots of positive media attention (Broder, et al.)

I don’t know what the polling in Connecticut says about Joe’s popularity, but changing parties isn’t likely to make him more popular. So, why aren’t his choices 1) run as an independent; 2) run as a Republican; or 3) retire?

@salacious crumb: I don’t think so. The point of outside money in elections is to afford the media buys that change/make up voters’ minds. Even that can’t work when a candidate is massively unpopular. Connecticut voters of every party are right sick and tired of Joe and have expressed bitter buyer’s remorse. He will not get reelected in Connecticut.

I don’t know what the polling in Connecticut says about Joe’s popularity

From the PPP poll I linked to above (October 2010):

Only 24% of voters in the state say they would vote to reelect Lieberman in 2012 to 66% who say they will vote to replace him. Majorities of Democrats (72%), independents (63%), and Republicans (61%) alike say it’s time to swap out Lieberman for someone new.

Lieberman is one of the most unpopular Senators in the country, with only a 31% approval rating and 57% of voters disapproving of his job performance. He’s on slightly favorable ground with Republicans at a 46/41 approval rating. But he’s lost virtually any remaining support he had with Democrats at a 20/69 approval and independents are against him as well, by a 31/56 spread.

If I recall correctly, Republicans make up a much smaller proportion of the CT electorate than independents.

Because – and correct me if I am wrong – I was pretty sure everyone from Chuck Schumer to then-Senator Barak Obama campaigned for Lieberman in 2006.

Obama endorsed and campaigned for Lieberman before the primary. After Lamont won, Obama gave Lamont a lukewarm endorsement and $5,000 but didn’t campaign for him.

Later, Lieberman’s campaign staff told the story of having literally begged for Obama’s pre-primary endorsement, which they characterized as a “lifesaver.” Lieberman, angry (with his characteristic self-absorption) that Obama wouldn’t endorse anyone but the Democratic candidate after the primary (although Obama had given him the gift of not enthusiastically supporting or campaigning for Lamont), repaid Obama by backing John McCain for the presidency in 2008.

Yeah, I remember a really good discussion of that episode (which I’ve never seen)–its not that they speak in cliches its that they speak and think mythically, in stories. You have to know the story and its common interpretation to grasp the implicit analogy they are making. In the case of the teabaggers it goes like this: memorize a faulty version of american history, refer to iconic moments/people/phrases as a sort of total burst of information that your listener decodes.

This just came up when Palin seems to have observed that Abigail Adams famous “remember the ladies” letter to her husband, –which actual human beings who read the actual fucking letter knows was a plea to grant women civil rights equivalent to that of men because the absolute power of the patriarchy was guaranteed to work out badly for some women just as the power of the slave master works out badly for the slave–was some kind of plea to remain in a subordinate position in a middle class leave it to beaver style family. Because there’s no such thing as original thinking or original thought on that side of the aisle you can bet this is actually some bit of common wisdom that is being punted around out there. From now on expect to see Abigail Adams understood and referenced not as a proto feminist but as a submissive christian wife.

As I recall from 2006, Connecticut doesn’t allow someone to run as an Independent – Joe had to create the Connecticut for Lieberman party and get that on the ballot with him as the senate candidate. But the CfL party is now controlled by anti-Lieberman forces, so there’s no way for him to use that strategem in 2012. He’ll have to come up with Joe Is Cool party then, and get enough signatures to put it on the ballot with him as the candidate. Not easy with low favorables. Funny, isn’t it, that Joe can’t be the candidate for the two parties he’s run on?

@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I don’t think bombing Iran (or just its nuclear facilities) is going to come up until late in 2011, say November or December. I think Obama has decided to start the war in March or April 2012, to make sure he’s widely seen as a War President in time for the election. Since Obama’s going to pre-empt that issue, I don’t think that would work for Lieberman. Oh, wait, yeah, he can make a big deal out of becoming a Republican to protest Obama’s indifference to the danger, and then claim that his action moved Obama to action. Yeah, that’ll work.